Slaughter the Dragon, Ha Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Game Setup
• Round Flow
• Trick
• End of the Round
• Ninjutsu
  • Summoning Jutsu
  • Bodily Division Jutsu
• Advanced Variant
  • Soul-Sucking Jutsu

Components

• 48 play cards ("cards") (purple, red, blue, and green. "1" to "12" each.)
• 8 Trump Indicator cards (2 each of purple, red, blue and green)
• 1 Dragon Head token
• 10 Dragon Body tokens
• 3 Ninjutsu reference cards
• 1 Bonus card

Game Setup

1. Adjust the number of cards and Dragon Body tokens according to the number of players. Return the unused color cards, unused Trump Indicator cards and unused Dragon Body tokens into the box.

Players	Color Cards Used	Dragon Body
3	Purple, red, blue	10 tokens
4	Purple, red, blue, green	10 tokens
5	Purple, red, blue, green	8 tokens

2. The person who has most recently used ninjutsu is the first lead player in the first round. If you must hide your use of ninjutsu, determine such player in whatever way you like.
3. Shuffle the Trump Indicator cards face down to form a deck.

Round Flow

1. Place all Dragon Body tokens in a row in the center of the table and place the Dragon Head tokens at one end.
2. Shuffle the cards face down and deal them as the players' hands. Place the pile of remaining cards face down as the Inverted Scale cards under the Dragon Head token.

Players	Hand	Inverted Scale
3	11 cards	3 cards
4	11 cards	4 cards
5	9 cards	3 cards

3. Flip to reveal the card at the top of the Trump Indicator deck. The color of the revealed card is the "trump color" for this round.
4. The winner of the last trick of the previous round performs the Summoning Jutsu. (Described later) There is no such player in the first round.
5. The player with the highest-number trump card in their hand performs the Bodily Division Jutsu. (Described later) To determine who to perform the ninjutsu, the lead player asks "Is there anyone with the 12 of the trump color?" If there is anyone with the 12 of the trump color, they respond "Here I am" and performs the Bodily Division Jutsu. If no one responds, the lead player keeps asking the same question with a lower number by one (11, 10, 9...) until someone responds. When you perform the Bodily Division Jutsu, you do not need to reveal the trump card to other players, though you must not lie. The same player may perform both Summoning Jutsu and Bodily Division Jutsu.
6. Keep playing tricks until everyone uses up their hand.

Trick

1. The lead player plays a card from their hand. (Its color is the "leading color".)

Important: At the start of the round, the lead player cannot play a purple card from their hand. As the round proceeds, the lead player can play a purple card if any of the following conditions are met.

• Someone has already acquired a purple card.
• The lead player has only purple cards in their hand.

2. Following the lead player, everyone take turns clockwise to play a card from their hand. If you have any card of the leading color in your hand, you must play one of them. (You must follow suit.) If you do not have any card of the leading color, you can play a card of any color. In such a case, you can play a purple card.
3. After everyone has played a card, determine the winner of the trick. The player who played the following card wins the trick.
   • If any trump color card is played: The highest-number trump color card
   • If not any trump color card is played: The highest-number leading color card
4. The winner of the trick takes a Dragon Body token and places it in front of themselves. (Only the winner of the final trick takes the Dragon Head instead of a Dragon Body token.) In addition, the winner of the trick takes all the purple cards played by everyone in the trick and places them face up in front of themselves. Put the played cards other than the purple cards aside.
5. Play the next trick with the winner of the current trick being the lead player.

End of the Round

1. The winner of the final trick reveals all the cards in the Inverted Scale and gets all the purple cards in it. This player will be the first lead player of the next round and performs the Summoning Jutsu.

2. Calculate the score. Count the positive and negative points according to the acquired tokens and purple cards, as follows.

   • Dragon Head, Dragon Body: +5 pt per token
   • Purple card: -1 pt × the number on each card ("1" to "12")

   Write down each player's score on the score sheet. In each round, adding up everyone's score totals -23 pt for 3-4 players and -33 pt for 5 players.

   Important: Shoot the Moon. If a player gets all 12 purple cards, the scoring system changes as follows. If this happens, ignore the positive and negative points from the Dragon tokens and purple cards.

   • Shoot the Moon Achiever: +60 pt
   • Other players: -20 pt each

3. The game ends when one or more of the following end conditions are met.

   • One or more players have each reached -100 pt.
   • A number of rounds equal to the number of players have ended.

   Otherwise, start the next round. Return the card at the top of the Trump Indicator deck into the box. At the end of the game, the player with the highest score wins. In case of a tie, the tied players share the victory.

Important: Even if you have a leading color card in your 2nd-half pile, you do not need to play it when playing your 1st-half (because it is not in your hand). Divide your hand into two so as to take advantage of this rule. Meanwhile, it is important for other players to observe when the 1st-half hand runs out.

Ninjutsu

Summoning Jutsu

Pick any 2 Inverted Scale cards face down and add them to your hand. Then pick any 2 cards from your hand and add them face down to the Inverted Scale.

[Note] The winner of the final trick gets all the purple cards in the Inverted Scale.

Bodily Division Jutsu

Divide your hand into 2 piles. Take one of these piles as your hand ("1st-half hand") and place the other pile face down in front of you ("2nd-half pile"). After you have used up your 1st-half hand, take the 2nd-half pile as your hand before the next trick begins. You may divide your hand in any way you like into the 1st-half and 2nd-half, so long as each half is composed of one or more cards.

Advanced Variant

[Note] If the players are familiar with trick-taking games, it is recommended to play with this Advanced Variant from the start.

With the Advanced Variant, the ninjutsu to perform changes when the Trump Indicator card is purple. This makes everyone aware of the higher chance to achieve Shoot the Moon and turn the tables with unexpected outcomes. In Round Flow, if the newly revealed trump color is purple in Step 3, the player who has the highest-number purple card performs Soul-Sucking Jutsu in Step 5 instead of Bodily Division Jutsu.

Soul-Sucking Jutsu

Everyone except for the Soul-Sucking Jutsu practitioner must pick a card from their hand and give it face down to the practitioner. The practitioner adds these cards to their hand, and then chooses and gives a card from their hand to each of all other players. The practitioner may give their highest-number purple card.

[Note] If anyone achieves Shoot the Moon even in this round, they get +60 pt and everyone else gets -20 pt each. Thus, choose to give a purple or non-purple card based on this condition.